The present invention relates to a method for navigating information retrieval, or more in particular to a method for supporting the information retrieval in such a manner as to secure a satisfactory result of retrieval even for an operator or a customer having an insufficient knowledge of a product.
Products having various functions are widely used through the world, and each maker, with the intention of leading the other makes, are equipped with a help desk system for meeting inquiries and claims about their products as a part of the customer services.
FIG. 1 is a schematic image diagram showing the conventional help desk system.
The customer makes xe2x80x9ca telephone inquiryxe2x80x9d for any problem he may have about a product that he has intended to use.
The help desk operator, upon receipt of the inquiry from the customer, searches a data base storing past cases and problems and dealing methods using such retrieval means as full-text retrieval, keyword retrieval or similarity-based retrieval, and in the case where there exists a similar inquiry, informs the customer of a dealing method for the particular inquiry as an xe2x80x9canswerxe2x80x9d. In the case where the retrieval by the operator fails to solve the problem, on the other hand, the operator makes an inquiry at a specialty department for the particular product, and the particular department gives an answer in place of or through the operator.
A help disk system with which the customer makes a direct retrieval without the intermediary of the operator is also extending. The customer checks for similar case documents of the past problems, if any, using the information retrieval system on the internet such as WWW (World Wide Web). In the case where the customer himself is unable to solve the problem, he makes an inquiry at a specialty department through electronic mail, telephone or the like.
The problem of the conventional help desk system is that, for lack of a sufficient knowledge of the product on the part of both the operator and the customer, the operator would fail to grasp the specifics of the problem from the customer on the one hand and the customer could not fully understand the problem on the other hand. Thus the case data base could not searched properly and therefore a sufficient result of retrieval has been unable to be achieved.
Accordingly, the object of the present invention is to provide a method for navigating information retrieval in which even an operator or a customer not equipped with a sufficient knowledge of a given product can obtain a sufficient result of retrieval.
According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for navigating information retrieval in which a navigation list is generated and output in accordance with a generation condition of the navigation list from the information on a plurality of cases to be retrieved.
In the method for navigating information retrieval according to the first aspect, a navigation list is generated and output based on the information about a plurality of cases for the product involved, and therefore even an operator or a customer not equipped with a sufficient knowledge of the product can obtain a sufficient retrieval result utilizing the particular navigation list.
According to a second aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for navigating information retrieval in which a navigation list is generated in accordance with the navigation list generation condition from the information on a plurality of cases for the product involved, the user is caused to select at least one of the retrieval navigation items included in the navigation list, and a sentence or a case including the selected retrieval navigation item is retrieved and output.
In the method for navigating information retrieval according to the second aspect described above, a navigation list is generated based on the information about a plurality of cases for the product involved and a sentence or a case including the retrieval navigation item selected from the navigation list is retrieved and output. Therefore, even the operator or the customer not equipped with a sufficient knowledge of the product can obtain a sufficient retrieval result by the simple operation of selection.
According to a third aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for navigating information retrieval, in which a retrieval navigation message is generated and output as a natural language message. Therefore, even the operator or the customer not equipped with a sufficient knowledge of a particular product can obtain a sufficient retrieval result by the simple operation of following the retrieval navigation message.